n to realize that their objects were real and not merely
sentimental or academic, that they were seeking practical means to
remove the conditions which had made the Great War possible. Public
opinion became more and more pronounced as the subject was more widely
discussed in the journals and periodicals of the day and at public
meetings, the divergence of views being chiefly in regard to the means
to be employed by the proposed organization and not as to the creation
of the organization, the necessity for which appeared to be
generally conceded.

With popular sentiment overwhelmingly in favor of some sort of world
union which would to an extent insure the nations against another
tragedy like the one which in November, 1918, had left the belligerents
wasted and exhausted and the whole world a prey to social and industrial
unrest, there was beyond question a demand that out of the great
international assembly at Paris there should come some common agency
devoted to the prevention of war. To ignore this all-prevalent sentiment
would have been to misrepresent the peoples of the civilized world and
would have aroused almost universal condemnation and protest. The
President was, therefore, entirely right in giving prominence to the
idea of an international union against war and in insisting that the
Peace Conference should make provision for the establishment of an
organization of the world with the prevention of future wars as its
central thought and purpose.

The great bulk of the American people, at the time that the President
left the United States to attend the Peace Conference, undoubtedly
believed that some sort of organization of this nature was necessary,
and I am convinced that the same popular belief prevailed in all other
civilized countries. It is possible that this assertion may seem too
emphatic to some who have opposed the plan for a League of Nations,
which appears in the first articles of the Treaty of Versailles, but, if
these opponents of the plan will go back to the time of which I am
writing, and avoid the impressions made upon them by subsequent events,
they will find, I believe, that even their own views have materially
changed since December, 1918. It is true that concrete plans had then
been suggested, but so far as the public knew the President had not
adopted any of them or formulated one of his own. He had not then
disclosed the provisions of his "Covenant."

The mass of the people were only co